NZ Abounds in Hackers, Reveals Report

There are more cyber-terrorists per person in New Zealand than any other place, except UK, reveals a recent study on "cyber-terrorism" spanning 10 countries.

As per security firm TippingPoint's study, British sites are most potential targets of cyber-terrorists, with a strike ratio of one strike per 479 Internet surfers. New Zealand, with one hit for every 638 users, ranks second. Australia is next with one hit for every 732 users. Rest of the seven nations covered in the study were China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan.

The study alleges that majority of the hacking originates from Turkey. A Turkish cyber-terrorist called "crackers_child" attacked the Digital Network hosted websites in May 2007, while in August last year (2006), there was an identical hit on web host iServe's sites.

A minimum of six hackers had left behind Turkey associated text, like eno7, SpyGrup.Org, Sabo Taqe, Thehacker, and Lord.

Frequently, cyber-terrorists enclose pages or e-mails to make users understand that they had breached the network, whereas others left spiritual or political texts.

It is inferred that majority of the attacks are more restrained and use malware to access computer networks for monetary benefit, but such instances aren't properly covered. Hackers, like city-born graffiti painters, usually publicize their attacks and announce their impact on sites like zone-h.org that carefully supervises cyber-crime.

The recorded hacks were just superficial violations but they were usually indications to more dangerous network breaches in the future, TippingPoint's security-marketing director Ken Low reported in a statement as published on May 25, 2007 by Stuff.co.nz.

Rob Lowe, member of the Australian Computer Emergency Response Team (AusCERT), alleged that destruction was actually just a tip of the iceberg of the rising worldwide online crime problem. Monetary gain through tricks like phishing frauds and spam distribution was fast becoming the actual goal of the hackers, as reported on May 25, 2007 by Stuff.co.nz.

Rob Lowe added that Individuals who are really interested in perpetrating an attack usually do not forewarn executives of the specified site they had planned to hack or it was they who had in reality exposed the site.